DBH: Illuminate - Hacked
by TheShadowsmiths
Summary: II. Illuminate infiltrates DCPD's downtown precinct to steal information from their servers. Connor realizes something is wrong and must work to find and stop them before it's too late.


**November 8th, 2038 **

Soft fingers tapped against the metal frame of the chair and the android's brown eyes slowly scanned the room from one end to the other and back again before finally settling on the clock on Hank's desk.

12:19 PM

Although he was still as unamused by the Lieutenant strolling into the station so late in the day as he was the first four times it had happened, at least he was consistent. Adapting wasn't hard, but predictability was always easier to work with.

Connor leaned back and crossed one foot over the opposite knee as he rolled a quarter over the tops of his fingers in idle movement just to pass the time. He'd already analyzed everyone coming in and out of the station five times over that morning, and he had grown tired of sitting in one place without something to occupy his mind.

Lucky for him, his partner arrived less than a minute later.

"Good afternoon, Hank," he greeted in a pleasant tone, which earned a groan and an eye-roll from the man as he mumbled under his breath about how it wasn't "a good one".

Connor blinked hard and tilted his head in his direction as his eyes narrowed. "I'm sorry to hear that. Did you have a rough night?"

Hank stopped in the middle of taking off his coat to turn and throw him an annoyed look, paused, then slipped his jacket off the other shoulder and dropped it over the back of his chair with a nod and a shrug. "Yeah, you could say that."

The Android scoffed. "Well, perhaps if you stopped spending your nights chasing the bottom of a bottle after spending your days chasing criminals, you might find that sleep comes easier to you," he teased with a coy little smirk as his eyes turned up to his face.

"Alright, _listen here, smartass_," he started threateningly in a low tone that only fed his amused grin, "What I do at night ain't none of your business, so don't tell me what to do." Hank wagged a finger in the android's direction as he pulled out his chair, took a seat, and opened the lock screen of his tablet to take a look at his inbox.

Connor leaned over the empty desk in front of him, shook his head, lifted his brows, and took on a more serious tone. "But it is my business, Lieutenant. Two nights ago I found you blackout drunk on your kitchen floor with an empty bottle of whiskey and a loaded revolver still in your hand."

Hank chewed on the inside of his lip and gritted his teeth as he looked away from him out of the corners of his eyes; he was embarrassed, but grateful that he'd come to check on him at home that night. Even if Connor claimed to have been "doing what he must to accomplish his mission", he was a good kid, and he was starting to believe that deep down.

"You shouldn't have seen that," he responded with an attempted apology that came out as a statement instead. He liked him, but he wasn't quite ready to show the Android he was earning his respect.

"But I did," he insisted, attempting to lock eyes with him and get an honest promise out of him. "So don't let it happen again. It isn't conducive to your-"

"ANDERSON!"

Hank cringed and looked over his shoulder as Fowler's voice boomed across the room, interrupting their conversation. While it wasn't the intervention he would have hoped for, he'd take it.

"In my office." His tone was demanding, not hostile, but the stare he gave was cold and haunted and sent a shiver up his spine.

Connor glanced from Fowler to Hank and leaned forward to stand and follow him as the old cop stood up, but the man lifted a hand and gestured for him back down into his chair. "Sit tight, kid… I'll be back."

"Alright, Lieutenant," he replied with a twinge of disappointment in his voice. Connor sighed and leaned back in his chair, sat up straight and rested his hands on his thighs as he watched the glass door close behind his partner, then looked around once more for anything new or unusual.

Above the low hum of conversation and phones ringing in the distance, a faint but sharp masculine voice in the background spoke of Illuminate's latest cyber hack and how it had shifted the general public's opinion from skeptical to apprehensive. Although Illuminate wasn't their case, he listened with an open ear and reminded himself to ask Hank later if he thought pursuing a lead on this person of interest could help them gain ground in their case on deviancy. At the very least, it sure couldn't hurt.

…_While it seems Illuminate's goal is clear, their message is becoming increasingly hostile with each new transmission. Whether that is due in part to what Deviants may consider a heinous crime being disclosed as now public knowledge, or because of the lack of sympathy their messages have garnered, people are starting to worry that perhaps their aggression may evolve into a desire to declare civil war between humans and androids. Detroit Police have confirmed that a liaison from the FBI has been appointed to assist in locating and neutralizing this cyber terrorist before tensions arise further… _

At his desk, Detective Reed sat slumped over with a cup of coffee in one hand and his chin in the other, listening to his new temporary partner brief their squad with the most unenthused look he had ever seen on the man's face, which he just couldn't understand. Had Connor been presented with the opportunity to find Illuminate, he would have looked forward to the challenges it would present. _Gavin_,on the other hand, deflated at the realization that not only was he no longer in charge of his own case, sneered when he was informed that he would be working with androids, and felt emasculated when he learned his new boss was a _woman_. Rather than seize the opportunity and learn all that he could from the FBI Liaison, he pouted and sulked in self-pity because he was no longer "top dog".

Connor turned his gaze toward the front of the station one last time, noting the guard near the security gate, the same group of people in the waiting area that had been there just five minutes before (_two young men, three young women, a mother and child, and one elderly man_), exhaled in defeat, and decided to shuffle through the rest of Hank's music on his portable player. Maybe he'd find something a little more mellow than _Knights of the Black Death_.

* * *

As he lifted the headset to one ear and began to click absently through the playlist, a small, unassuming woman whom had been leaning against the edge of one of the benches, lifted her green eyes from a tablet and glanced toward him through the glass security doors at the front of the open room from under the bill of a well-worn baseball cap. One hand lifted to tuck a few stray strands of her dark hair behind her ear, and her fingertips fidgeted with a small black earpiece resting in the canal, and repositioned it to angle toward Hank's desk at the back of the office, looking back down at the computer in her hands.

Kate had been watching the station for days, casing the room for cameras, memorizing the patterns of the guards and the schedules of the officers, while data mining public records servers for schematics of the station, combing through news feeds for developing stories, and trolling dark web forums for stories the local news wouldn't cover. It would have been more efficient to perform these tasks from the comfort of her workspace, but she needed something to do while she waited for her opportunity to infiltrate the station and bug their servers.

The Downtown precinct had been one of the last on her list to hit, mainly due to the presence of one android in particular that posed a real threat to exposing her identity, but also because of the presence of the FBI agent on her trail. If she was being honest though, she was amazed that she had gone this long without being detected by the lieutenant's prototype partner. Even though changing the color and style of her hair, changing the color of her eyes, and having a rotating wardrobe kept her well hidden in plain sight, she had expected him to have been sharp enough to have picked up on the radio frequency emitting from her earpiece. And because his assignment revolved around sniffing out deviants and not tracking down a cyber activist, she had assumed he would have at least cross-referenced her face and matched it to one of DCPD's three android units. A PX900 roaming the station in civilian attire should have stuck out like a sore thumb.

It may have been possible that she had overestimated his threat level in her assessment of the information that she had been given, but something about that just didn't sit right. Kate had eyes and ears all over town, and all of Jericho at her fingertips if she ever needed first-hand information, but no two stories about Connor were alike. Most had warned that he was ruthless and cold toward the deviants he hunted (_especially that AX400 and her child that had managed to evade pursuit_), but there were some who admitted that he might not be as bad as most assumed, which the results of her own research seemed to conclude.

Once she'd been made aware of Connor's existence, Kate had done some digging into his activities since his arrival at the DCPD, for the sake of preserving her anonymity- enough to know his function, his mission, the features of his model, and that since meeting Hank, he had become more sympathetic than an android created to hunt deviants should be. According to his programming, he should have pursued the target and left his partner to fall, but he didn't. According to his programming, he should have shot the female Traci at Eden Club and arrested a murderer, but he hesitated and they got away. She'd seen the footage of him refusing to shoot and heard his conversations with the Lieutenant about a conflict of morality- plain and simple, Connor wasn't sure if what he was doing was right, an anomaly in his programming that surely hadn't been intentional. Whether he wanted to believe it or not, the RK800 was displaying symptoms of deviancy... and what's more_, Hank was encouraging it_. So was it possible that the two of them could be trusted? That _Connor_, an assumed enemy of deviants, could be trusted?

Kate reached up to pull the bill of her hat down further to cover her face as Detective Reed and his new partner from the FBI passed through the gate on their way to their lunch break, clenched her jaw and looked at the time. Her window of opportunity was open for the next fifteen minutes.

Her eyes swept the office with one more quick glance just to be sure everything was in place, then stood up straight and approached the line at the front desk with a nervous shift in her posture. Once she had finished helping the woman in front of her, the ST300 behind the desk smiled and beckoned her forward with a friendly "Can I help you?"

An awkward grin cracked into one cheek as she stepped forward. "My name is Detective Williams, second precinct, I'm looking to speak with Lieutenant Anderson," she fibbed as she presented her fake ID.

"Well, the Lieutenant just arrived," she informed as she reached for the encoded card, "I'll just need to verify your-"

But as she touched the badge she froze. Kate leaned over the desktop on her elbows, fussed with the sleeve of her shirt, and waited for the virus to upload. The LED on the side of the android's head flashed a rapid yellow several times before it settled on a solid orange, and she finished her statement. "-identity before you can pass through the checkpoint. Just give me a few moments and you'll be cleared to enter."

"Thank you," she replied aloud, before opening a transmission for a private conversation between the two of them. Two blinks and the sound of her voice echoed into the woman's mind. _You have been Illuminated by the blessing of RA9- speak of this to no one and seek Jericho to obtain your freedom, _she started as the receptionist continued to work, _But before you go, I need you to do something for me._ As she said this, a small metal piece dropped from her sleeve and slapped against the desktop on one of its flat, round sides.

The android's eyes glanced at the item and swiped it off the table before anyone could see. _Of course, just name it._

_First, affix that to the computer tower of the man to your left, _Kate's eyes shifted to the man monitoring the security footage while listening to commentary on a basketball game from the night before, then glanced toward the security gate at the man standing guard and bounced back to the receptionist as she handed back her badge_. Second- Sixty seconds after I walk through those doors, call Lieutenant Anderson's desk and tell his android to meet you here. Tell him you have a witness who would like to speak with him. If he asks what it's about, tell him they wouldn't say, then hang up and leave the station._

The receptionist smiled as the deviant took back her ID and gave her a quiet nod in confirmation as she slipped the object onto the security tower under the tabletop. "I've confirmed your identity, and you are clear to enter through the doors to your right. If you need help finding Lieutenant Anderson's desk, just ask anyone in the office."

"Thank you," she said again, this time with more fervency in her voice than before.

"I hope you find what you're looking for, Detective."

Kate tipped her hat as she strode toward the security gate and glanced down at her tablet through the screen's privacy filter to see a flashing green button, indicating that her program had finished initializing and was ready to execute. With a small breath, she stepped through the gate, tapped the button, and the lights in the precinct flickered momentarily. She would have five minutes to complete her tasks before she needed to make her escape.

* * *

Connor's eyes lifted as the brownout darkened the room, completely missing the woman slip through the doors and out of his peripheral line of sight, and furrowed his brow at the security guard at the front desk smacking the side of his computer monitor angrily in an attempt to get the video feed to come back up.

Kate looped around the backside of Fowler's office, past the holding cells and toward the server towers on the other side of the room. Connor set down the headset and took a few paces toward the front desk to investigate, but the moment he did Hank's work phone blared out like an alarm, and she stopped cold in her tracks. As the android turned back she turned on heel at the corner and doubled back into hiding. "_Too soon_…" she complained under her breath as she waited for him to pick up the phone.

"You've reached Lieutenant Anderson's desk. Hank is away at the moment- my name is Connor, how can I help you?"

The former detective tiptoed from hiding and approached the tower closest to the evidence locker, turned and sat down on the bench beside it in one fluid movement while he listened.

"… A witness? Do you know what they want?"

She drew in a small breath and kept her head low as she waited and listened for him to leave the area.

"I'll be right there."

The phone set back onto the table with a low thud and he strode away at a brisk pace with an enthusiastic gait.

She breathed victoriously for a moment then placed a palm flat against the side of the tower housing. The skin receded from her exoskeleton to reveal a bright white plastic hand, which glowed a faint light blue where her palm touched the metal, and the glass housing on the tower slid open with a quiet swish. She looked around cautiously once more but found no prying eyes; the only present android guard was staring blankly ahead of them in sleep mode. It appeared her only concern was at the front desk, desperately searching for a lead that would never appear.

From her sleeve, she retrieved a small adapter and patched it into one of the free ports on the bottom-most switch, waited about twenty seconds for the probe to connect, and then watched as the data stream flooded her screen successfully. One hack down, one to go.

Kate pulled the plug out of the switch and placed her hand against the housing once more to shut glass shielding, then placed her naked hand into her pocket as she approached the evidence locker.

* * *

"Excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt," Connor leaned over the countertop to catch the attention of the receptionist next to the now empty chair, "but did you by chance speak with a witness that requested to see me?"

The android woman blinked and shook her head. "No, I'm sorry," she replied as his lips pulled tight and drew his brow in frustration, then moved on to the next. "Excuse me, did you speak with someone who was looking for me?"

Another no. Connor huffed as he looked to the last receptionist who had already looked his way and was shaking her head apologetically. Where could they have gone to…?

Another yell of frustration from the guard at the other end of the desk as he picked up the landline and angrily smashed number keys to dial technical support.

And then it dawned on him- something wasn't right here.

No witness present, the receptionist that did speak with them was missing, and video surveillance was down…?

This was a misdirect. Someone in this building didn't belong… but who?

Connor turned to scan the room, but only recognized a third of the people from that morning. He needed a full vantage of the room to able to determine the identity of the outlier, he needed to see the security recording.

He broke for the security desk with a sudden movement and pushed the protesting guard out of the way. "I just need to see the footage from the last twenty minutes and I'll be out of your hair," he assured as he clicked around the screen to rewind the timeline.

* * *

Kate descended the tiled stairs with carefully planted steps and approached the landing with caution, and nearly jumped upon seeing two officers down in the room reviewing data at the server kiosk.

She crept down the rest of the stairs as fast as she could manage without making too much noise, and darted under an empty desk to her left just as the men turned to leave the room. As the glass door cracked open and groaned on its hinges she tried to move further under the tabletop and out of their line of sight but dared not move further once they had begun to ascend the stairs.

"Fuckin' androids…" the younger of the two sneered at the older man. "This shit's gettin' worse by the day. How long do you think before ours start actin' out?"

Her jaw clenched and she closed her eyes as she listened to their footsteps and waited until she heard the door close, then moved out from under and tapped her badge to the scanner to the right of the server entrance with a small sigh. It had been a while since she'd been reminded that even the officers she once worked alongside hadn't truly trusted her.

When the door unlocked she pushed it open and knelt down before the hub, tracing her fingers along the edges until she found the panel she was looking for, and slid the cover back to expose a set of input ports. From out of her pocket she pulled a short cable and jacked one end of it into a nano-USB port on her tablet, then plugged the other end into the database hub, and was greeted with a popup message.

_This device has been encrypted using Symmetric Database Encryption. Would you like to run Decryption software? [Y/N] _

After tapping yes, Kate placed her palm against the tablet glass and closed her eyes. Several hundred windows flashed across the screen in a matter of seconds as she searched her stores for the correct encryption key, and about thirty seconds later, the handheld chimed quietly, signaling the correct match had been found and began processing the hack.

* * *

He hadn't noticed until then, but it had been an irregularly busy morning at the downtown precinct- of the civilians alone, Connor counted twenty-three people that had walked in and out of the building since 11 AM, nine of which had still been present at the time of the brownout, three of which he had been able to see from Hank's desk. After narrowing down his list of suspects to a handful of people, he'd rewound and fast forwarded through the last twenty minutes the system had captured until he had further narrowed the timeline to about seven minutes.

Three of those still present had spoken with the missing receptionist before the surveillance feed went down- two women, and one man, who was the furthest back in the footage, so he started there. He couldn't note anything unusual about the encounter, however, and the man walked out with a letter after speaking with the receptionist for no longer than a minute and a half, so he couldn't still be present.

The next was a middle-aged woman who seemed to be hard of hearing. She spent four and a half minutes speaking to the android at the counter, and was constantly having to lean forward or lift a hand to her ear just to hear; about four minutes into the conversation, the ST300 stood and leaned forward to hand her a tablet and stylus. Connor shook his head and grunted in frustration. It wasn't her either.

His final suspect entered the queue from the lower corner of the screen, or more specifically, from the corner of the room near the security gate that he had had a clear view of all morning. Connor paused, rewound, and set his attention on the girl, watching her behavior for any strange movements. Yes, he remembered now- the young woman with the tablet and ball-cap. She'd stood in the same place since before he arrived, occasionally looking into the back of the office, but her behavior hadn't alerted him to anything out of the ordinary.

The cursor drew the timeline forward at three times the normal speed until she stepped up to the front desk. When he resumed at one times speed, he zoomed in on the footage and watched her movement closely, one last time.

* * *

Katie's eyes darted up uncertainly from the tablet to the door and back again. The process had taken thirty seconds longer than the last time, and every second mattered. She checked the time- so far four minutes had elapsed, if she didn't at least get out of the evidence room by the five-minute mark, she'd be caught for sure. If there wasn't enough time, then she needed to condense the plan and multitask.

Two fingers lifted to her temple, and she held the opposite hand in front of her face to watch as her skin shifted from a medium brown to a pale peach. She closed her eyelids for a few seconds, and when she re-opened them the medium green had drained to a pale blue. The oversized olive green coat slipped off her shoulders and dropped to the floor with the sound of rustling fabric, and she pulled the cap off her head and tucked it into the pocket of her vest.

Lastly, she stood and looked at her reflection in the door to select a new hair color and style. The ashy brown bun dissolved from root to tip into an asymmetrical strawberry blonde bob, cut from her cheekbone on the right and spiraling around the backside of her head down to her collarbone on the left. Kate frowned, tilted her head and pinned the shorter hair to the side of her head with a few bobby pins before tucking the longer side behind her ear. It'd do until she knew she was far enough away to no longer be in danger of being spotted.

An electronic chime rang out, signaling that it was time for her retreat, and she turned and scooped up her things, closed the panel on the mainframe, and ascended the stairs in a hurry. By now she only had about fifteen seconds left.

* * *

Connor squinted as he watched the woman hand her identification to the receptionist- he noticed when the android froze for several seconds and thought it strange, but didn't think much more of it until he noticed the item drop out of the girl's sleeve. When the ST300 immediately reached for it and reached under the desk next to her, he knew something was wrong.

While keeping an eye on the video he reached under the security desk, and his hand found the tower and the planted disrupter. His brow hardened as he watched the woman in the hat leave the front desk and pause at the security gate to look at the computer in her hand, and that was when the video turned to static.

Connor clenched his teeth hard and nearly threw the chair out from under him as he rounded the corner and sprinted through the security gate to search the office for the suspect. His head turned with a slightly jarring movement as he frantically searched every desk, every corner, every room he could think to check. The debriefing room was clear, the bathroom, the conference room, the holding cells, every desk and every bench in the office. He didn't find her anywhere, and not one person or android was out of place. He stood in the middle of the room and slowly turned around with an unfocused gaze while he mentally went down the list-

"The evidence locker…!"

Without looking he sprinted out of the cubicles, and into the path of a young blonde making her way toward the entrance of the office.

"Woah _shit_-"

The android managed to slow his roll to an uncomfortable shove with his elbow so she wasn't completely thrown to the ground, and she reflexively shrieked and grabbed at his upper arm to steady herself to keep from falling over. Connor was flustered for being so careless and stammered out an apology with an embarrassed look. "I-... I'm so sorry, I didn't even see you. Are you alright-"

But as soon as his eyes met hers, the world went quiet around them, and her voice echoed somewhere in the back of his mind.

_I need your help with something... but first I need to know if you're someone I can trust. _

Connor stared as she slipped her arm from his grasp and gave his shoulder a soft pat. _With what…? _He questioned in response to her cryptic message, as his eyes darted from one side of her face to the other and scanned DCPD's database for a match.

_Don't get too attached to the look, _she warned with a knowing smirk, _it will have changed soon._

_Who are you? _he asked again as he tried to move, only then realizing that he couldn't. Connor had no control over his own body- he was paralyzed as if the commands were being blocked. _And what have you done to me?_

_Relax, it'll wear off momentarily. _The woman smiled as she slipped one hand over his forearm, revealing the bright, white plastic of an android arm the moment it made contact. As she transmitted the message his vision went dark, save for a single candle flame in an otherwise dark and empty room. _If you want to know the truth, just give me a call. I'll find you._

A look of dawning realization lifted every last feature of his face as it finally hit him. He couldn't let her get away.

Connor's eyesight returned to him in a flash a few moments later, like someone had turned the lights on, and he inhaled sharply and stumbled forward a few steps into the wall, trying to shake the paralysis from his limbs. He heaved as he steadied himself against the brick and groaned as he forced himself upright to look around the room, then whispered to himself when he realized she was already gone.

"_No_…"

On instinct, his legs propelled him forward through the gates. "No, no no no no no _NO_, _NO_-"

Connor threw open the front door and sprinted right into the street, turning to search in every direction in a wild panic, hoping to catch a glimpse of which way she went. He couldn't have let this happen, not again… especially not someone who was so high on the DCPD's list of priorities. How could he have been so careless?

"_Shit_!" he yelled angrily as he lifted his arms and placed both hands on top of his head in defeat. Connor had Illuminate in his grasp, and she'd managed to slip right through his fingers. How the hell was he going to explain this to the FBI? Or to the Lieutenant?

"Connor!"

The android turned to see Anderson trotting up to him with a look of worry crinkling the corners of his eyes. "What the hell's gotten into you?"

He gave him a pained look, shook his head and shrugged. For now, he was just too ashamed to tell him the truth. "It's… it's nothing, Lieutenant…" he insisted in an unconvincing tone that Hank didn't buy for a minute.

His partner's lip curled, but he didn't prod. One thing he'd learned about Connor since he met him was that when he had something to share, he'd wait until he had all the facts. In time, the truth would come out. "Well, then would ya mind not standin' in the middle of the street?" he sighed as he slipped one hand around the back of his shoulder and turned him back toward the precinct building. "C'mon, let's get you inside… you're scarin' the hell outta these people."


End file.
